Palin Should Come Out Swinging in Debate

On the night of Thursday, October 2nd, first-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will face off against six-term U.S. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware in their only scheduled debate of this campaign season. The conventional wisdom says that Biden, while being careful not to appear mean or condescending toward Gov. Palin, must simply display the fruits of his 35 years of experience in Washington to hold his own. But as is so often the case, conventional wisdom fails to take into account how wrong Biden has been on almost everything over the years.

While John McCain was still being tortured in the Hanoi Hilton, Joe Biden, like nearly every Democrat of the time, came to the U.S. Senate opposing the Vietnam War. Once elected, he voted to cut off funds to the South Vietnamese government, thereby ensuring a Communist victory.

In the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan was facing down the Soviet Union’s “evil empire,” Joe Biden favored the utopian notion of a nuclear freeze and opposed the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative, saying, “The president’s continued adherence to SDI constitutes one of the most reckless and irresponsible acts in the history of modern statecraft.”

Biden supported Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega and fought Reagan’s attempts to support the Contras opposing him. He also opposed many other necessary weapons systems, such as the Trident submarine, the B-2 bomber and the Pershing ballistic missile.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the whole world rose up to support the coalition led by President George H.W. Bush. Not Joe Biden. He opposed the use of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf War, thereby voting to allow Saddam Hussein to continue raping and pillaging a neighboring country, stealing their oil and threatening the nearby Saudi Arabian oil fields.

When America again found it necessary to take on Saddam Hussein in 2003, Joe Biden thought it would be a bright idea to split the country into three ethnic states: Sunistan, Shiastan and Kurdistan. (He now denies he wanted to partition Iraq, but his plan could have had no other outcome.)

Then, last year, when John McCain was urging the Bush administration to implement the surge in Iraq, Joe Biden voted ‘no.’

And those are just some of Joe Biden’s foreign policy misjudgments. His judgment on domestic policy is just as bad. He claims to be Catholic and yet supports abortion, and his votes on judicial appointments prove it. As chairman or ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he opposed some of the best Supreme Court nominees of our time: Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. He voted for Antonin Scalia but later said he regretted it.

A believer in gun control, Biden receives an ‘F’ from the National Rifle Association. He supported lawsuits against gun manufacturers for gun violence, but voted ‘no’ on more penalties for gun and drug violations. So, to review, he wants the victim of a gun crime to be able to sue the manufacturer of the gun, but he wants no additional penalties imposed upon the perpetrator of that crime. Sounds like typical liberal thinking to me. A lifetime NRA member, Sarah Palin could have a field day with that one.

Biden also wants to raise taxes, just as Obama does. He not only favors allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, he wants to raise new ones as well.

Sarah Palin should embrace the Ronald Reagan debate philosophy: be yourself and trust your conservative political instincts, knowing that while you will not win over every voter, enough of the American people share your values that you will prevail over the class warfare, international appeasement and emotional gibberish of the Left. In fact, Palin should perhaps quote Reagan on the silliness that is liberalism. One of my favorites from the Gipper was when he said, “It’s not that liberals don’t know anything; it’s just that so much of what they know just isn’t so.”

Yes, Joe Biden is knowledgeable in the ways of Washington. His inside-the-beltway experience is extensive. But he has been on the wrong side of history for 35 years, and Sarah Palin should come out swinging and point out that fact at every opportunity.

Mr. Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and public policy adviser. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including The Conservative Voice and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.